Great Holes of Chicago

“Great Holes of Chicago” was a temporary mini-golf course designed and built for the 2014 AIA National Convention in Chicago. The three-hole course featured iconic architectural landmarks. Each ‘hole’ represented a literal void or conceptual erasure in the architecture history of Chicago. Stanley Tigerman’s collage Titanic depicts Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Crown Hall sinking into a watery hole in Lake Michigan. The Titanic was meant to provoke architects to contend with the Mies legacy, challenging them to choose sides: move beyond Mies or remain cemented to the past. When golfers sank their putts into Tigerman’s watery hole, Crown Hall temporarily rose from the deep. Prentice Women’s Hospital is, or was one of Chicago’s most enigmatic buildings. Designed by Bertrand Goldberg in the 1970s, it is beloved by many Chicagoans because of how innovatively and organically its function is expressed through its flower-like structure. Prentice’s form was a beautiful response to its programmatic requirements and the logic of its internal plan. When golfers sank their putts into Prentice, lights turned off, the building went dark. The Chicago Spire — designed by Santiago Calatrava — was a super tall skyscraper project in Chicago that was abandoned in 2008 with only its foundation work completed. The deep, perfectly circular hole in the ground still has potential to become a prominent, even historic addition to Chicago’s architectural heritage. When golfers sank their putts into the Spire hole, a fan temporarily inflated an abstract building ‘tower.’